Sunday, 14 October 2012

Orange sponge with curd filling

I love a fair, I truly do!
This weekend Mr CC and I visited a fair with many craft and cottage
industry type stalls; one of my favourite stalls was run by a Hertfordshire bee
keeper selling their honey. They even
bought along some bees for us to meet!
They also made honey curds. Yes –
honey curd! Chatting to the lady who made the curd, she
explained it was a classic curd recipe but she simply replaced the sugar with
honey. Here’s my classic curd recipe I shall be adapting to make honey curd in the future. Yes, there is some curd missing from the pot
in the photo – Mr CC snaffled some to have on bread before I used it all up for
this cake!

I purchased a pot of honey and lime curd and – oh my – it was
heaven! The first hit was thick, rich honey
and then the lime cut in with a light sharpness. I instantly ditched the recipe I was going to
bake this week and picked an orange sponge which I suspected would work with
the curd perfectly.

The orange sponge gets its intense flavour purely from
orange zest. I know! Me using the hated peel! But I did, for I have made a discovery. I don’t mind zest if it’s so fine it has no
texture in the baked sponge. Step
forward Lakeland with their awesome ceramic grater for zest. Seriously – look at how fine it grates! It’s finer than strands of saffron:

Now, it must seem like I bang on about Lakeland a lot –
truth be told, if they set up a cult I’d probably be an early follower! I sometimes think it would just be cheaper to
do a Victor Kiam and buy the company (now there’s a reference for all of you who
enjoyed TV adverts in the 80s!). But, I
must stress that I bought it (the grater, not Lakeland) – it’s not a product
plug and I don’t have an advertising deal with them!

Tempting though it was to make buttercream and beat the curd
into it, I decided to keep it very pure and use the curd on its own. The curd had a pleasingly citrus edge to it
and I didn’t want to dilute that and lose its punch. I topped the cake with an orange glace icing
which added good flavour and texture.

For a cake designed and created on the hoof, I’m rather
proud of this one – it’s fresh, zingy, light and beautiful. I’m looking out the window and seeing grey
skies and Autumn; I’m looking at my plate and seeing sunshine and Summer. What more could one ask for?

19 comments:

OMG, CC, this looks incredible! You've done a fantastic job and it looks lush. I don't tend to like big bits of zest in bakes, either, so this does look perfect (I use a micro plane on mine) and definitely no lumps! Can I try some, pretty please? ;)

That seriously looks like perfection to me. What a great use of a great product. I wonder why I've never seen a honey curd before, it sounds utterly delicious!

I sometimes feel like I'm constantly plugging Lakeland, and like you, it's all my own money that I've spent there. I think perhaps we should go into partnership and offer to buy them out.... (goes out to buy lottery ticket....)

Hehe!! victor Kiam what a blast from the past but seriously CC, you could do much worse that buy Lakeland, I spend (waste) far too much time and money in there. This cake looks yum and I love that clinging onto summer feeling it radiates x

Honey curd? There's a new one on me- but one I'll definitely keep an eye out for, it sounds absolutely lush! I too am a great lover of all things Lakeland- each time one of their new catalogues drops through the letterbox, any planned activity is pushed aside for a cuppa and a good nose through all the brilliant products!

The honey lime curd sounds amazing!! The cake looks great too especially with the icing dripping down the side. I'm a huge Lakeland fan too - I should probably buy shares in that company as I seem to spend so much each time I shop there!

I've only just caught up with your posts and wow I've parked my plate here please. Not heard of honey curd either, lovely. I'm so impressed by you tea cakes too. Don't think I could have made them with time constraints either. Fab posts thanks for sharing :-)

Finally got around to writing the review for this cake! I don't own two 8-inch sandwich tins, so I used a 10-inch one. After baking the sponge I sliced it horizontally, then vertically, then I put the halves on top of one another (clever, right?). It felt a bit silly - doing so much work and getting just half a cake out of it? I contemplated just slicing the cake once and putting one layer of curd between the slices, but... the multi-layerness seemed one of the best thing about this recipe. After the assembly he cake looked like something that afternoon teas had been invented for - golden, crumbly and dripping with icing. I absolutely loved the tangy, citrus-y bite in each ingredient, and the sponge was melt-in-your mouth delicious. And oh - I used homemade curd from the lemon cupcakes recipe, swapping sugar for honey, just as suggested. Major thumbs up.

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